Automobile “stereos” are gradually being replaced by more complex components that have numerous capabilities in addition to the capabilities of playing music from over-the-air radio broadcasts and from tapes and CDs. For example, automobile accessories are being designed that incorporate such features as cellular telephones and Internet connectivity. A U.S. patent application entitled “Vehicle Computer System,” filed by Microsoft Corporation on Nov. 29, 1995, having Ser. No. 08/564,586 (hereby incorporated by reference), describes one such automobile accessory. Generally, many systems such as this are similar to desktop computers, with added multimedia capabilities and other capabilities related to the automotive environment.
Mobile automobile computers sometimes incorporate hardware for determining the absolute geographical position of the computer or automobile. Currently, this is accomplished using a positioning receiver that receives satellite transmissions and processes such transmissions to determine geographical coordinates (such as longitude and latitude). The system currently in use is referred to as the Global Positioning System (GPS) and is maintained by the government of the United States. Low cost receivers are available for use with various types of mobile computers.
The most obvious use of positioning capabilities is in conjunction with mapping software. Thus, application programs have been developed for showing a user's current position on a scrolling map and for providing driving instructions to a driver based on the driver's current position and a specified geographical objective.
Location data can be exploited even more effectively when a mobile computer also has Internet access. When this is the case, geographical data can be provided by Internet servers and can therefore be drawn from a much larger database.
In addition to these uses of real-time location data, however, the inventors have realized a need and an opportunity for automatically providing mobile Internet users with geographic-specific information as part of their normal Web browsing activities.